Walkers of the world, please raise a glass and toast the amazing pioneers of the Walk2012 route. Brave souls who sacrifice weekends to stand perplexed in the middle of nowhere trying to turn my nonsensical instructions into something actually useful, so that future walkers of the Walk2012 route (officially called The Games Way) won’t get horrendously lost.
This blog post is dedicated to the fantastic contribution to Walk2012 of Dr Victoria James, who I am pleased to say is alive and well, despite attempting to walk the Romsey to Winchester stage of the route.
Laminated Walk2012 route cards and official Walk2012 road test badges have been posted to about half a dozen intrepid walkers and I am beginning to get some really useful feedback.
Unfortunately, I have to report a few problems with the route instruction – alas! And I write this as someone with a lot of experience of day-walks, and of following only written instructions.
Oh dear! How bad can it be? Let’s see…
I only got as far as Hursley, for reasons which will become apparent! Here are some thoughts on the instructions for the section I did do… Blue text is commentary, red is suggested expansions of your directions.
…ah, there is rather a lot of blue and red text. This doesn’t bode well…
[...]This got dodgy. [...] taking the stile to your left gets you to a stile in the corner of the field which takes you over to the riverbank. I was then casting around for a way of crossing the river, before abandoning it and backtracking to find another way across.
…hmm, yes we struggled a bit there ourselves. Still Victoria found the crossing eventually, and then had a couple of relatively trouble-free walking until coming out of the woods, near(ish) Hursley…
At this point you lost me. [...] there was no option to go straight ahead, it was a t-junction. I backtracked to the footpath sign [...], couldn’t see any other options, so retraced my steps down the hill [...] it brought me out at Ampfield, miles from Hursley. I walked two miles along the main road on the hard shoulder.
Not good. I think I would be in a bit of a strop if I was in her shoes…
What with backtracking several times earlier to check bits of the route, and the final ‘where on earth!’ moment, it had taken 4 hours to cover approximately half the route. So I decided to abandon it in Hursley. I couldn’t risk encountering similar problems on the second half after dark.
…but no, she still has her humour…
It became surreal after a while – the public footpath that mysteriously disappeared, the stile that led to nothing but an overgrown riverbank, and the mud that reached Somme-like proportions across most of the route. I was caked in it solidly from the waist down by the end!
It is testament to the resilience of walkers that despite having been put through such a frustrating experience, the email continues…
I may try the Hursley-Wincehster section before Christmas, or over the holidays if I can. The Putney-Stratford version I’ll try either this weekend or next. Got my badge!
and…
But what a beautiful day it was to be walking! Who could ask for more…
And at one point, four small deer (Muntjac i think, but possibly sika) bounded through the sunstreaked trees in Ampfield Wood – a beautiful moment.
Thank you so much Victoria!
What this blog post doesn’t contain is all the detailed improvements Victoria has suggested. I am planning to rework the route instructions when I retrace the walk with my friend Terry in the new year and we’ll be taking all of Victoria’s notes with us.
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Phew! Glad I opted for the Putney stretch! Couldn’t do it when I planned because my free week got moth-eaten by agencies and umbrella companies but aiming for Sunday.
What a trooper (Victoria I mean)! It’s good that you didn’t crush her spirit entirely.
What brave souls! My parents wrote a few walking books when we were kids and we were used as guinea pigs to test the instructions, but at least they came with us on the walks in case we got lost! It has made me rather intolerant of bad instructions though, especially those which do not account for changes over time (eg turn left at the red gate – as if no-one ever buys new gates or repaints them….!)